Computing devices continue to evolve into different configurations, such as notebook computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs) cellphones/smart phones etc. Many of these devices are under market pressures to be as small as possible. Despite the sizing pressures, the devices' graphical user interface (GUI) remains a central focus of the devices and users tend to want the GUI to be as large as possible. Toward this goal many devices have adopted touch sensitive screens that can perform both input and output functions. These configurations can utilize a soft keyboard (i.e., a visual keyboard presented on the touch sensitive screen to replace or augment traditional keyboards). Accordingly, traditional input devices, such as keyboards have been reduced in size or eliminated to make space available for the touch sensitive screen. While soft keyboards offer several advantages, the ability of the user to launch the soft keyboard and/or to control the soft keyboard remains rudimentary. The present concepts offer enhanced soft keyboard usability and controllability to the user.